Card Readers in Vending Machines

Years ago I assisted a company that developed magstripe readers that would operate in vending machines, copiers, laundry machines for a project related to college campus cards. My part was to assist them with both the message formats, connection methods, as well as selecting transaction types and device captures modes (Host Based Capture works the best in this model, BTW) for integration to a payment switch and authorization host and ultimately certifying the different devices.

While I was in Dallas last week I took a snap shot of a vending machine that had a similar device:

These are not new, but I don’t visit Vending Machines like I used to and don’t see that many Vending Machines that accept payment cards. This appears to be a model from USA Tech called the ePort. I got a water and coke for a total of $3.00, btw 🙂

1 Comments

Surely this would be restricted to high volume locations only as
1: The device would need to be connected to a phone line (or… don’t tell me its wireless), and
2: the actual card reader, validator and smarts would cost as much as the actual machine surely?